Gavo

Ha ha, I have replied to a really old thread question here. Oh well! Perhaps it was good to revive it as I think I will be looking at doing this myself in the near future, so any comment/info/debate is appreciated.

cheers

gav

Hi Geokat,

 

I have no qualification to advise you apart from having been there, done that and hoping to get the t-shirt! But for what it is worth I would say yes the RSMS is the best way forward as it gives you immediate permanent residency, which the 457 temporary visa does not. Obviously if you decide Aus is not for you then you can just leave, but at least if you get permanent residency then you have the option...

 

As far as your employer sponsoring you goes, I would say if they have a problem with paying the fees then you pay them. I think the RCB was around $350 and the Visa itself is about $2500 (but you would have to pay that part regardless). We have paid the fees for our sponsor as to us it is very much worth it, but you never know your sponsor may be quite happy to pay.

 

Your employer will need to demonstrate that they have advertised your job locally and were unable to fill it from the local labour force (this can be demonstrated by adverts or receipts from advertising and then a signed statement saying that the other applicants were unsuitable and why). They will also need to offer you a 2 year contract at a pay rate that is equal to the award rate and equal to what they pay other employees in the same position.

 

We found that the hardest thing was getting all the employer's paperwork together, in the end I went into the office (it is my husband who is being sponsored) and helped to prepare all the documents for them- this was definately worthwhile. From experience I would say that if they were willing to offer you the job while you were overseas and you and/or your girlfriend show willing to help with getting the paperwork together and possibly paying the fees then they will probably be willing to sponsor.

 

As for the job, as long as you have a full apprenticeship, and your employer writes a letter stating that a full apprenticeship is a minimum requirement for the position, and the job is in a 'regional area' (which is just about anywhere except capital cities and the Gold Coast) then the job is suitable for an RSMS visa. There is no job list for the RSMS. My husband is a diesel mechanic and his qualification is a South African apprenticeship, the Regional Certifying Body has approved it, but we are waiting on the nomination approval. A full apprenticeship is equivalent to a diploma- it says so on the Immi website and our agents have previously had visas granted on this basis.

 

I hope this is useful, do let me know if I can help any more, and good luck with speaking to your employer...

Hey there, some good advice and info sunshine. I have been looking into this visa myself, as I am sick of the nowhere leading 457 that I am on, and having been made redundant recently I no longer trust larger companies have the integrity to follow through with their promises of sponsoring for PR via ENS. So my advice to anyone in a similar situation would be the same. Don't waste time and money on getting a 457 that is quite likely to cause you a lot of stress and ultimately lead nowhere if you are serious about staying in oz. having spoken to a migration agent recently, I can tell you that the fees for the RSMS have recently increased and it is now more like $500 for the RCB app, and $3000 ish for the visa app. The employer is not obligated to pay the costs unlike the 457, and their part in in RSMS app shouldn't really cost them much more than a bit of their time in getting the necessary docs together etc. a lot of companies that are regional don't know anything about these visas so its sometimes just a case of helping them out a bit by giving them a heads up on it all. I would suggest that you download the info booklet for this visa from the immi website. It will explain a whole lot more.

By the way those fees are if you just handle the app yourself, if you want a migration agent to help you you could be looking at between $6-9 grand depending on the level of help.

The fact is though that this visa is given priority in processing, and is flexible in that there are less rules governing it for both the employer and employee, that and the fact that the employer is not expected to pay for it make it quite appealing to them. And if approved you will have PR which isn't something to be sniffed at really. You would have to make sure though that you do make a significant effort to stay working for that employer for a two year period or immi have the power to revoke your visa, so......

Regional Australia is not for everyone though, depending on where you are it can be quite a culture shock, but having said that there would also be many regional places that you would love to live in. It depends what kind of lifestyle you want/are expecting and what sort of job you are looking for, so do your research first.

Either this or the other thing I would look into is seeing if someone will sponsor you for PR outright via ENS or some other visa. I don't know enough about that though, but I have a feeling that chances of getting an offer like that are usually reserved for the higher echelons of the working population in big money jobs and most companies wouldn't like the idea anyway.